My own personal hypothesis? An explosion of sexual content in media, coupled with, somewhat ironically, much more tolerance of gay people, means that for a lot of people their only exposure to nudity is in a (potentially) sexual context.
Also nudity is a big thing. Sexy is used to sell many things, but nudity is viewed in very weird way from European perception. Violence is somewhat interesting too from same viewpoint.
I think the problem arises due to a very small portion of society that take it too far. The association between nudity and savagery has been grandfathered in. Even if the nudity is pure, people are explicitly or unintentionally afraid, and for good reason: we have children and death in porn. No reasonable person wants that, so we restrict the lot. ML probably could solve this specific problem, but we are too afraid to loosen the borders.
Not being able to cope with nudity seems to be a USA specific phenomenon. I female friend of mine was almost arrested in the US for dancing too suggestively, and she was far from being nude. Seems to be a puritanism thing.
Why not both? You could also argue that repeatedly seeing the most beautiful actors in the business nude, can hurt a teenager self image pretty badly, or that learning about sex from movies is probably not the best idea.
I don't believe I confused pornography with nudity, I am merely stating that pornography and nudity are both fairly accepted outlets in the US. I do believe that many foreign people (largely Europeans) believe the US is very conservative in regards to nudity and are just flat wrong...likely because they have very limited experience in the US.
While I don’t think lack of nudity can “hold a society back”, somewhere around 99% of the male population in the United States is addicted to porn (which is a type of nudity). Clearly there is no lack of nudity.
The US market presents a bit of a challenge in that the country is so large with distinctly different cultures. Some parts may as well be called Puritanical while others are more to the Western European mindset.
The parents around my area have no problem with children seeing breasts or other body parts. Scenes involving intimacy on shows and in movies provide a good segue into conversations about sexuality. But, we have a major problem with characters slaughtering one another in gun violence.
The reality is that we simply watch more Amazon and Netflix original series/movies, in which body parts and sexuality are more likely, and avoid shoot-em-up blockbusters.
While that could be a historical cause, these days it's actively part of the American culture. Interestingly there is almost a kind of hypocritical attitude. A lot of American culture involves sexualisation, especially involving celebrities; which often extends to kids in varies ways (fashion, magazines, music). Then parents also try to keep sex and nudity from their children, because they deem it will 'damage' them.
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